Just read the story, thought it was very reminiscent of one of the plot points in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (1992) - until I noticed the publication date of 1988, 4 years earlier!
Charles Stross who for some reason posted on usenet about it in the wikipedia article uses a form of this to great effect in several books in The Laundry Files
Not everything is sweetness and light in the era of mature nanotechnology. Widespread intelligence amplification doesn't lead to widespread rational behavior. New religions and mystery cults explode across the planet; much of the Net is unusable, flattened by successive semiotic jihads. India and Pakistan have held their long-awaited nuclear war: external intervention by US and EU nanosats prevented most of the IRBMs from getting through, but the subsequent spate of network raids and Basilisk attacks cause havoc. Luckily, infowar turns out to be more survivable than nuclear war – especially once it is discovered that a simple anti-aliasing filter stops nine out of ten neural-wetware-crashing Langford fractals from causing anything worse than a mild headache.
Just read the story, thought it was very reminiscent of one of the plot points in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (1992) - until I noticed the publication date of 1988, 4 years earlier!